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Hacker news forgets that people need to get shit done, and all of this bullshit marketing is just a distraction.

by psbp 13y ago

hkmurakami 13y ago
I found that having the !$var shortcuts to all sorts of sites (including !g for google, !w for wikipedia, and single word strings for many lesser trafficked sites) has made me more productive than a plain google search bar where I often need to add an extra click to the workflow.
- magicalist 13y ago
  As is usually pointed out in these threads, if you're using Chrome anyways, you can do the same thing (and with the same bang syntax, if you want to go to the bother of customizing them that way) with the location bar in Chrome. Start typing the web address, hit tab, enter the query, and it just goes straight to wikipedia, google, etc with no DDG intermediary. It's slightly different, but you can do almost the same thing with Keywords in the Firefox location bar, and they presumably could support the bang syntax (or whatever) as well.
  - Legion 13y ago
    It's more than "slightly different". By all means, try and replicate this complete list in your Chrome browser: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html. I'll wait... What makes the DDG !bang system awesome is its enormity. You don't look up what !bang to use to search something. You assume it exists, do it, and 99% of the time, you're right. That's a game changer. I don't write Perl, but I know !cpan exists. I don't even have to look. I don't even know exactly what site it's going to search. But I know if I !cpan twitter, I'm going to be looking at a list of Perl libraries for tweeting. That's the DDG killer feature. You want to do some kind of site-specific search or lookup, you just type in the most logical sounding !bang and assume it will work. You're simply never going to replicate that inside your browser.
    - strager 13y ago
      > You're simply never going to replicate that inside your browser. Why not?
    - magicalist 13y ago
      You don't have to replicate the list. Why would you want to? If you've visited a site before and it has a search box on it that matches some heuristic, it gets added to your search engine list. Odds are, far more than 99% of the time, you're going to be searching a site you've already visited before. I agree it is very handy.
      - hayksaakian 13y ago
        His main point has to do with finding new sites about specific topics. A different use case not met by Chrome's implementation.
      - Zarel 13y ago
        It's actually a standard, not a heuristic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch If the search box is nonstandard, you can also add it manually by right-clicking the search box and clicking "Add as Search Engine".
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      What makes the DDG !bang system awesome is its enormity. Please don't tell me it's evil. I believe you meant "scope", "scale", or "size".
      - reaperhulk 13y ago
        Enormity has a neutral use as well.
      - minikites 13y ago
        > Usage note > 3. Enormity has been in frequent and continuous use in the sense “immensity” since the 18th century: The enormity of the task was overwhelming. Some hold that enormousness is the correct word in that sense and that enormity can only mean “outrageousness” or “atrociousness”: The enormity of his offenses appalled the public.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I've become very used to doing this. The other handy fact is that if you start typing out a URL you can see the expansion, then hit tab to start the search, rather than having to remember the bang syntax for DDG. I'll switch between methods though.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    I've been doing that for years (Opera was first with this functionality), but simply being setting DDG to the default search versus having to configure all those different keywords, saves me SO much time. If it was just my desktop, and for some reason it only had one browser, okay. Customization is always cool. But I use too many different computers with too many different browsers in too many different locations that DDG's !bangs makes this really convenient and portable, getting the fast browsing workflow I'm used to in just a few clicks.
dpcan 13y ago
It took one search for some css help I needed and I already switched back to Google. I don't have time to see if DDG knows the answer yet. I just need the answer and Google gives it to me.
KirinDave 13y ago
Strong words coming from someone meta-commenting on a hacker news story instead of "getting shit done."
- abe_duarte 13y ago
  Lol!
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  You have to do something on your Pomodoro breaks...
ivanca 13y ago
Is really sad that this comment is not grayed out.

Hacker news forgets that people need to get shit done, and all of this bullshit marketing is just a distraction.

by psbp 13y ago

Hacker news forgets that people need to get shit done, and all of this bullshit marketing is just a distraction.

I found that having the !$var shortcuts to all sorts of sites (including !g for google, !w for wikipedia, and single word strings for many lesser trafficked sites) has made me more productive than a plain google search bar where I often need to add an extra click to the workflow.

magicalist 13y ago
As is usually pointed out in these threads, if you're using Chrome anyways, you can do the same thing (and with the same bang syntax, if you want to go to the bother of customizing them that way) with the location bar in Chrome. Start typing the web address, hit tab, enter the query, and it just goes straight to wikipedia, google, etc with no DDG intermediary. It's slightly different, but you can do almost the same thing with Keywords in the Firefox location bar, and they presumably could support the bang syntax (or whatever) as well.
- Legion 13y ago
  It's more than "slightly different". By all means, try and replicate this complete list in your Chrome browser: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html. I'll wait... What makes the DDG !bang system awesome is its enormity. You don't look up what !bang to use to search something. You assume it exists, do it, and 99% of the time, you're right. That's a game changer. I don't write Perl, but I know !cpan exists. I don't even have to look. I don't even know exactly what site it's going to search. But I know if I !cpan twitter, I'm going to be looking at a list of Perl libraries for tweeting. That's the DDG killer feature. You want to do some kind of site-specific search or lookup, you just type in the most logical sounding !bang and assume it will work. You're simply never going to replicate that inside your browser.
  - strager 13y ago
    > You're simply never going to replicate that inside your browser. Why not?
  - magicalist 13y ago
    You don't have to replicate the list. Why would you want to? If you've visited a site before and it has a search box on it that matches some heuristic, it gets added to your search engine list. Odds are, far more than 99% of the time, you're going to be searching a site you've already visited before. I agree it is very handy.
    - hayksaakian 13y ago
      His main point has to do with finding new sites about specific topics. A different use case not met by Chrome's implementation.
    - Zarel 13y ago
      It's actually a standard, not a heuristic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch If the search box is nonstandard, you can also add it manually by right-clicking the search box and clicking "Add as Search Engine".
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    What makes the DDG !bang system awesome is its enormity. Please don't tell me it's evil. I believe you meant "scope", "scale", or "size".
    - reaperhulk 13y ago
      Enormity has a neutral use as well.
    - minikites 13y ago
      > Usage note > 3. Enormity has been in frequent and continuous use in the sense “immensity” since the 18th century: The enormity of the task was overwhelming. Some hold that enormousness is the correct word in that sense and that enormity can only mean “outrageousness” or “atrociousness”: The enormity of his offenses appalled the public.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I've become very used to doing this. The other handy fact is that if you start typing out a URL you can see the expansion, then hit tab to start the search, rather than having to remember the bang syntax for DDG. I'll switch between methods though.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  I've been doing that for years (Opera was first with this functionality), but simply being setting DDG to the default search versus having to configure all those different keywords, saves me SO much time. If it was just my desktop, and for some reason it only had one browser, okay. Customization is always cool. But I use too many different computers with too many different browsers in too many different locations that DDG's !bangs makes this really convenient and portable, getting the fast browsing workflow I'm used to in just a few clicks.

dpcan 13y ago

It took one search for some css help I needed and I already switched back to Google. I don't have time to see if DDG knows the answer yet. I just need the answer and Google gives it to me.

KirinDave 13y ago

Strong words coming from someone meta-commenting on a hacker news story instead of "getting shit done."

abe_duarte 13y ago
Lol!
TeMPOraL 13y ago
You have to do something on your Pomodoro breaks...

ivanca 13y ago

Is really sad that this comment is not grayed out.